The present invention describes a novel encapsulation system. More specifically, the invention describes inorganic-organic hybrid mixture sol-gel encapsulated phospholipid vesicles and methods of preparing them. The invention also describes encapsulated Langmuir Blogget (LB) lipid membranes and proteins.
Biological macromolecules catalyze specific reactions in biological systems. This makes them desirable reagents with a host of applications. However, the large-scale commercial viability of biological macromolecules is limited by critical factors that include poor stability under and limited tolerance to industrial operational conditions, technical difficulties in recovery, and recycling from the reaction systems.
Lipid membranes and vesicles mimic the biological cell structure. Due to its self-assembled uniform structure and resultant physicochemical properties, they have gained more research attention and application in a variety of fields. However, lipid membranes and vesicles are fragile metastable systems. The monoleyer, bilayer and multilayer structures tend to be easily destroyed under varying conditions of temperature, external stress or changing media. Therefore, efforts are underway to immobilize biological macromolecules, lipid membranes and lipid vesicles in ways that stabilize and preserve their reactivity and uniform structure.
However, conventional sol-gel encapsulation procedures have limitations. The primary drawback is that the resultant gel is extremely fragile. It is easily broken under mechanical stress, so its encapsulation is not likely to provide a practical device. In spite of advances made in this area, there remains a need for a system that is endurable and whoce mechanical properties may be modified as desired.
The present invention includes novel compositions comprising lipid vesicles or Langmuir-Blogget membranes (LB membranes) encapsulated with sol-gel encapsulation. The present invention also includes compositions comprising proteins entrapped in the silyl lipid membranes or vesicles which are encapsulated in sol-gel. The lipid vesicles and LB membranes, which may be monolayer, bilayer or multilayer, are made from a variety of silyl lipids or their mixtures with phospholipids. The present invention also provides a sol-gel encapsulation composition comprising inorganic-organic hybrid mixture sol-gel. Hybrid mixture sol-gels possess enhanced mechanical properties. The present invention further provides methods for the preparation of sol-gel encapsulated compositions. The present invention also provides an application of the compositions of the invention in renal dialysis.